The Bestiary

Description

From a writer of remarkable gifts, Borges with emotional weight, comes a tale that is at once a fantastical historical mystery, a haunting love story, and a glimpse into the uncannythe quest for a long-lost book detailing the animals left off Noahs Ark.

Xeno Atlas grows up in the Bronx, his Sicilian grandmothers strange stories of animal spirits his only escape from the legacy of his mothers early death and his stern fathers long absences as a common seaman. Shunted off to an isolated boarding school, with his fathers activities abroad and the source of his newfound wealth grown increasingly mysterious, Xeno turns his early fascination with animals into a personal obsession: his search for the Caravan Bestiary. This medieval text, lost for eight hundred years, supposedly details the animals not granted passage on the Arkgriffins, hippogriffs, manticores, and basilisksthe vanished remnants of a lost world sometimes glimpsed in the shadowy recesses of our own.

Xenos quest takes him from the tenements of New York to the jungles of Vietnam to the ancient libraries of Europebut it is only by riddling out his own family secrets that he can hope to find what he is looking for. A story of panoramic scope and intellectual suspense, The Bestiary is ultimately a tale of heartbreak and redemption.

From the Hardcover edition.